I cannot believe that it’s already the second of March, 2021. One year ago today, I was in the process of falling in love with someone who would break my heart, someone who would lead me on and convince me to trust, only to disappoint me when I was at my most vulnerable. I was also becoming increasingly concerned over the Covid pandemic. We didn’t know very much about it by this point, and while there were no quarantine or face mask recommendations yet, there was a growing sense of panic and uncertainty.

I had hoped and planned to spend the spring and summer camping last year, but that didn’t happen. I had hoped to go hiking a lot and spend as much time in nature as I could, but that didn’t happen either. Too many people weren’t wearing their masks or keeping socially distant, and my current partner and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. It was hard, too, because I told myself last year was the year I would be doing all the things my ex made me feel like I could never do: hike on my own, go camping on my own, put up a tent on my own, build a campfire on my own, etc. But none of those things happened.

This year, I have some (though not much) hope of at least going camping, but that will entirely depend on how the spring and summer months unfold. If not going camping, then my hope is that I can be more active outdoors this spring and summer than I was last year. The woods, the ocean, rivers, hiking trails, the hills and mountains, are all parts of who I am and they feed my wellbeing like almost nothing else can. I’ve been working from home for almost a year now, too, and I am not a homebody. I am and always have been a very active person. And while I, as an individual, am not more or even equally as important as society as a whole, I still must acknowledge that being cooped indoors for this amount of time is wearing on me in really big ways. I don’t go out to eat. I don’t hangout with friends. My interactions with people are confined entirely to the internet or phone conversations (with the exception of seeing my mom as I continue to move my things out of my parents house). I’m not willing to risk my own or anyone else’s health, which is why I’ve stayed inside so much, and if I’m ever outside, I always wear a mask, but it’s still a massive struggle (to be clear, the mask is NOT the struggle, but other people’s refusal to wear them IS, and that makes it even harder for me to spend time outside).

Nature is also a part of my writing and creative processes. The less I’m out in nature, the less I write. The less active I am, the more I struggle to be creative. And there are things I’ve been able to do to mitigate this (reading is one, enjoying the trees behind our condo and watching all of the birds and squirrels, and recently I started watching American Horror Story and it is absolutely amazing and very inspiring), but they don’t replace nature. I’ve tried ignoring how much I want to be in nature, and that only makes things worse. So instead of pretending I’m okay when I’m not, and instead of ignoring my need to be more active outside, my resolution is to try and find easy, safe ways of getting this need met. That’s my goal for this coming spring, summer, and fall. Safety is most important, and if I can’t find any safe ways of hiking and being outside, then it’s back indoors for me, however difficult that will be. But I’m allowing myself to hope for better.